Sara Baume Meet the Author

Net migration to the UK has fallen below 300,000

It's still above the Government's target figure.

Sara Baume has written a novel that deals with one of greatest

contemporary problems, the feeling of loss,

maybe hopelessness, among young people who think

that the opportunity they'd been brought up

Her book A Line Made By Walking uses artwork as a structure.

She was an art student herself in Ireland and the story is told

by the narrator Frankie, who struggles with mental illness

It's a dark story but a compelling one.

The theme of this story is a problem, I suppose, that's very,

very familiar and troubling to many people at this moment.

I think we live in an age when people grow up much slower.

It's funny, I think about this quite often now, my parents were married

But it's totally acceptable that in your early 30s you're still...

I'm still doing exactly what I did as a child only,

I'd like to think, a slightly more sophisticated version.

I've had some wonderful responses from parents.

Saying that they're going to give this book to their kids,

I suppose only to know that you're not the only person

I think it's something I touch on in the book

without passing any judgment, Frankie, the narrator,

feels very lost and disilussioned in a quite normal way

because society is set up to make us feel our lives are incomplete

To what extent is there an autobiographical element?

It started actually with a nonfiction essay that I wrote

when I was in college and it was structured

around photographs of dead animals that I was taking,

the idea that this character is stranded in the Irish

countryside, feels very lost and alone and feels as though

everything is dying and nature becomes a kind of metaphor for that.

It's like the way when you're pregnant, not that I've ever been

pregnant, but you suddenly see people who are pregnant,

She keeps finding these dead animals because she notices them, I suppose.

That builds the landscape around her.

You were an art student and the visual arts are very

important to you, you see the world in a sense through

It's interesting that you use artwork as a

It did because I suppose it came out of the character's own mind.

She's a former art student who is struggling to be an artist

and she is concerned that now that she's finished formal education

she won't learn anything any more and so she's getting herself

on the artworks that she knows and at the same time trying to find

meaning for her life in the only way she knows how, through

It's a strange idea, really, isn't it, that learning stops

when formal education ends because it should

actually be the other way round and we should all know that

and understand it and look forward to it.

Yeah, that's most jobs, they result in an ending of that. I am very

covered by the fact that I graduated during the Irish recession. I think

it's still a problem in Irish society, we are all qualified but

there are so few opportunities. You end up in dead-end jobs and learning

in. Frankie has all kinds of problems and you touch on something

that is on many people's mind, the prevalence of mental illness of

various kinds, for which there is no immediate help, not much prospect of

escape. More aware of that now RV? I suppose we are. We grow up slower

and we are more lost and disillusioned. There is no

medication for that, which is the easiest way. I don't stand in

judgment of the people that take mitigation. Frankie is very

resistant. The book draws to a certain conclusion and it's for the

reader to decide whether she was right to be resistant or not. What

do you think of Frankie? Rewriting this book recently, it grew from the

essay that I wrote when I was 2526, rewriting it recently there were so

many things that restricted me about her and I was tempted to cut because

I don't think like that any more. Then I realised that this is my

25-year-old self. You have to V herself. Precisely. She needs to

make our own mistakes without you intervening. Yes, she needs for

people to decide for herself. What did it tell you about your

25-year-old self, rewriting this? I was very self absorbed and I think

that is a sign of the times. Different perspective. The big deal

is a lot with the death of the grandmother. At the time, I was

interested in tackling that. I am still interested in that. We don't

use much about grandparents. Since the book, in the last year, my

father died. That was a huge dissertation. They said that you do

not fully grasp and tell you one of your parents dies. I made a huge

shift in that time period myself. Frankie seems very small and the

eagle is very important. I think you need a bit of ego if you're going to

push or the arts. Do you think that people are more alone and they have

to be self reliant if they will make their way? Yes, I sense a writer

both lonely character. That is what interests me and it is an endless

subject. -- yes, I tend to write about lonely characters. This is a

book about the loneliness of failure or the loneliness of having received

that you have failed when really your life has hardly begun. -- of

having received that you have failed. Would you like people to

feel more optimistic about life when they finished the book? I hope that

the artworks will... Love them. Well, let them in a way or get

people to look at smaller details more closely. If that were you find

yourselves? It is. Nature is a big thing in both books. This is not a

new wave, it is the mindfulness thing, slowing down and looking at

things more closely. There is a painter that said that he has a

quite mind and that you work hard for it. Then it's society, we don't

have a quite mind. Frankie's mind is certain -- is certainly not quite.

You don't think about that when you're working. Let's erect for a

quite mind. Yes. Voter, thank you very much.

Well, after a very stormy day today. Tomorrow is looking a lot calmer. We

can